


four women

by carltzmann



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Drabble, F/F, Fluff, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 13:34:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7534675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carltzmann/pseuds/carltzmann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a little drabbly description of each ghostbuster</p>
            </blockquote>





	four women

**Author's Note:**

> what are we calling holtzmann/patty?? jillatty?? anyway sorry for putting that ship in there i can't HELP MYSELF

Erin was smart. She was the kind of smart that could simply sit in her bedroom for 3 hours, thinking, understanding. Her intelligence lived in the intangible theoretical spaces that her mind created, in the relationships between numbers that she couldn't put into words until she sat and wrote things down for a long time. It was an amazing feeling to fight back against the conformity-obsessed academia part of her, which had taken power for so long. The part of her that hated Ghost Girl, hated any strange part of her that others always interpreted as scary or off-putting. Her bedroom was once the most pristine area in the firehouse, but it had deteriorated as she needed workspace that couldn't always stay clean. After she developed a habit of writing things out on the walls, the girls had gotten one wall covered completely with a white board so that Erin could do her work without hurting the firehouse's worth (this point was irrelevant, though, naturally. None of them would ever be able to bring themselves to selling their beloved firehouse.)

Holtzmann was different. She couldn't spend time with her thoughts, had to act them out. She thought with her body just as much as she did with her mind, and while she was incredibly intelligent, she couldn't work out equations for hours like Erin could. Holtzmann was a performance artist and a visual artist, and loved her work in the sense that it was a form of curious expression - felt like discovery as much as it was creation. Her lab was beautiful and dangerous and sparked curiosity in anyone interested enough to look closely - much like Holtzmann herself. Despite this physical intelligence, Holtzmann was rarely understood by others. While she could explain every tick, whir, and explosion that her inventions performed, her audience often simply heard pseudoscientific babble and dismissed her genius. This was the beauty of meeting Abby, who was the first person who actually fought to understand Holtz, and realized it wasn't nearly as hard as others had thought. And Patty was similar, because Patty was always having to keep quiet about her intelligence. Holtz loved Patty to the end of the earth, loved curling up in Patty's bed on the off nights when the physicist did go to sleep. She loved going to sleep and waking up surrounded by Patty, who was large and beautiful and intelligent in a way Holtzmann wished she could be. The scientist's hands were constantly itching to combine, build, invent. It was wonderful to have this itch satisfied every single day, surrounded by people who loved and appreciated her for who she was.

Patty was underestimated, and used to it. Her intelligence was much like a happy medium between Erin and Holtz's; it was a quiet intelligence, one she had gotten used to suppressing after one too many strange looks when people realized she could easily list off the histories of every building in New York. She liked knowing it all, could see the city not only in the ever-changing incarnation of 2016 but also in every other state, from the first presence of humans in the area to the Revolutionary War to the present day. She had gained this knowledge alone, borrowing encyclopedias and history books from the library until she had read them all, and her memory was unlike any other; she had memorized the facts after reading every book only once, and this awareness was like a map in her head, a graph of everything she knew. It was a beautiful thing when Patty caught on that the Abby and Erin and Holtzy were different. She knew she had to be a part of this, knew she would face any kind of danger if only she could work with these amazingly intelligent women who understood what it was like to have to quiet one's differences, even if it meant quieting one's intelligence. She loved Holtzy especially, because Holtzy was often the one to curl up in Patty's arms after a long day, and Patty got to wake up to see the impressive bedhead that resulted.

Abby too often felt like so much less than her colleagues. She had spent a long time learning how to blend in, how to stay appropriate and how to dress and how to have a good image. Of course it didn't always work, and she often found herself attracted to the people who had barely tried to be normal at all, like Holtzmann and Erin. She had grown up conservative, quiet; her childhood with massive Christian family meant she was a good fighter, but knew to keep her voice down. When she left for college, and eventually started working with Holtzmann, she slowly let herself go, relearned how to be excited and enthusiastic about Marvel and science. She was still working to learn the things her colleagues had taught themselves in middle school, and her passion motivated her; her passion to prove herself right, to fight for the one thing she had held on to throughout the years: the existence and dangers of ghosts.


End file.
